


ich könnte dich nicht schützen

by offarawaysandfuturedays_inmydreams



Category: Der Besuch der alten Dame | The Visit - Dürrenmatt, Der Besuch der alten Dame | The Visit - Schneider & Reed/Hofer/Struppeck
Genre: (or lack thereof), (very slight but just in case), Family Angst, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Teen and Up, just since there's slight detail about the birth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-20 13:47:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30005817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/offarawaysandfuturedays_inmydreams/pseuds/offarawaysandfuturedays_inmydreams
Summary: Klara Wäscher leaves Güllen on New Year’s Day, a mere two days after the trial, snow coming down around her in sheets, her too-thin coat hardly enough warmth for her, much less the baby inside her. She climbs onto the train that stops barely long enough for the conductor to shout “Güllen” and for her to pull herself aboard, no idea where she’s heading except away.AU where Claire's daughter lives and she watches her grow up mostly from a distance
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I pulled pretty heavily from the play for the husbands and for her daughter's name; plenty of inspiration from the musical to be found as well!

Klara Wäscher leaves Güllen on New Year’s Day, a mere two days after the trial, snow coming down around her in sheets, her too-thin coat hardly enough warmth for her, much less the baby inside her. She climbs onto the train that stops barely long enough for the conductor to shout “Güllen” and for her to pull herself aboard, no idea where she’s heading except away. 

Her mind’s a million miles away for the hours she sits on the train, snapping back to reality only when a crew member clears his throat and says “ _Endstation, Fräulein_ ,” extending a hand awkwardly to help her up. He drops his hand almost instantly, however, the moment he sees her red-rimmed eyes and seven-month pregnant figure. She grabs her tiny suitcase off the seat next to her, filled only with a single change of clothes and a thin envelope of money she’s hidden away over the years. 

Exiting the train, she steps onto the nearly empty and dimly lit platform, heading for the map on the wall with “Hamburg” written in curling calligraphy at the top. There’s nothing she recognises as a place she can go, her mother’s family in Germany long gone overseas and her father’s family warned not to take her in. She collapses onto a bench, burying her face in her hands, and then feels a gentle tap on her shoulder. 

_“Liebling,_ are you lost?” an older woman asks, concern written all over her face, the only person all day to do more than glance at her and away again. Klara manages to string together enough words to explain why she’s here, alone, at this hour, and the woman nods understandingly. She gestures for Klara to follow her, shaking her head when she sees Klara’s bare, dirty feet, and leads her outside, through a maze of backroads, until they stop in front of a church. The door creaks open at their arrival and a hand points them to a side door. Once they’ve made their way over and inside, the woman explains her situation softly to the priest who’d let them in, while Klara nibbles at a crust of bread. She looks up at a loud exhale, sees the woman leaving, and nearly bursts into tears all over again at the first friendly face she’d seen in days leaving ( _leaving_ , like everyone else does to her). The priest pulls her back from the door, gently explains that the church has a place where she can stay _“bis du deinen Weg hier findest.”_

Then he leads her to another room down a side hallway, empty save for a single cot and a small chest of drawers. He points her to the showers, to where she can find someone if she needs anything, and gently strokes his hand over her hair like she’s a child (she supposes she still is, even if she’s about to have a child of her own). She sleeps fitfully that night, tossing and turning when she can’t sleep, and waking to the baby’s kicks every time she does manage to doze off.

* * *

Klara spends the next two months wandering the city by day, hoping against hope to find a place willing to employ an unwed, pregnant seventeen-year-old, and finding her way back to the church at night, the room promised to her until the baby is born as impersonal as the day she arrived. (Her eighteenth birthday comes and goes with no fanfare, not a change from the years before, but somehow worse this year.) Exactly two months to the day of her arrival, she wakes up with cramps rippling across her stomach, more intense than she’d expected, and she’s rushed to a hospital. They leave her alone in a tiny, sterile room for hours, a nurse stopping by every hour until it’s time for her to give birth. It’s the only time since leaving Güllen that she briefly wishes Alfred were here with her, if only so she can yell at him again for doing this to her. What feels like days, but is probably only hours, later, one of the nurses wipes a damp cloth across her forehead, whispers _“nur noch einmal”_ in Klara’s ear, and so Klara pushes again, and hears the tiniest cry as the baby comes out. 

The doctor cleans up the baby, wraps it in a clean white blanket, and hands it to Klara after a weighted discussion held through silent glances with the nun who accompanied her to the hospital, a discussion she doesn't quite understand. _“Es ist ein Mädchen,”_ he says, smiling softly at her. She looks down at the baby asleep in her arms, her hair a dark brown, nearly black, with the slightest hint of red peeking through. One of the older nurses (around the age her mother would’ve been by now, she can’t help but think) sits down on the edge of the bed, asks if she has a name for the baby, and Klara whispers “Genevieve,” memories of her mother floating to the front of her mind as she says the name. The nurse smiles, gently takes the still-sleeping baby, and places her in the bassinet nearby. Klara falls asleep herself, then, staring at _her daughter_ until her eyes drift shut. 

Hours later, she wakes up, disoriented and feeling empty before she remembers the whirlwind of events of that day. She glances over at the corner of the room where her baby should be, surprised to not have woken sooner to soft newborn cries, but finds nothing there. She sits up straight in bed, wincing briefly at the pain that shoots through her entire body at such an abrupt movement, and screams until a nurse she hasn’t seen before rounds the corner, looking frazzled.

 _“Fräulein, was ist denn los?”_ she asks, looking around the room and glancing up and down Klara’s body to determine what the problem is. Not immediately seeing anything wrong, she steps closer to the bed and cups Klara’s face in her hands, tucking stray curls behind her ears. Klara bursts into tears, _“Mein Kind, ich will mein Kind,”_ she cries, shaking with the force of emotion running through her. The nurse sighs, gently helping her lay back against the pillow, and promises to return shortly. It feels like an eternity before she does, Klara’s already-short nails bitten even closer to the quick in the few moments she’s gone. She looks Klara in the eyes, explains that the church welfare system has taken her baby in until she can be placed with a family “better suited” to raise a child. Her heart shatters all over again; she’s lost the only two people left who meant anything to her in a two month span with no chance of getting either back. 

The doctor comes back in, then, does a perfunctory check-up on her (a distinct change from his friendly manner earlier), and tells her she needs to spend a few days at the hospital. He can’t meet her eyes when she begs him to confirm what the nurse said, which only serves to do exactly that. Klara’s days in the hospital are an empty blur, marked only by the nurses bringing her meals and the morning her milk starts to come in for the baby that isn’t hers anymore. (Her emotions break again when it happens, but no one knows how to comfort her, or maybe they won’t, and so she bears the weight of her grief alone, like she’s done all her life.)

When they finally release her, she wanders back towards the church, the route through Hamburg familiar now. The priest won’t let her in, won’t answer her questions about her daughter, simply passes her suitcase through the crack in the door, and wishes her well. She finds her way from shelter to shelter, unable to stay anywhere for longer than a week, too afraid they’ll somehow betray her again, and still unable to find work. Nearly a month later, her meager savings long gone, she finds herself in front of the brothel she swore to herself was her last resort. The woman inside gives her a once-over, taking in her bright red hair but disheveled appearance, and waves her inside. She’s asked her name and hesitates before murmuring “Claire.” It’s there that she spends most of the next three years, aching to leave even briefly and find her daughter, but not allowed to outside until the day she’s bought away and into a life unlike anything she’s ever seen before.

* * *

_Three Years_

Claire Zachanassian’s husband has never understood her obsession with visiting orphanages. She tells him it’s so he can be seen out in the community, a contributing member, despite there being a hundred other ways he could do so. What she doesn’t tell him is that she scans the face of every little girl she comes across, looking for her hair and bone structure or Alfred’s eyes and nose. She can’t tell him because she knows he’d never believe it of her, a woman who’s made it this far by locking away her heart, and because no one can know about her daughter or her past.

They’ve visited nearly every orphanage in a twenty-mile radius when she finally sees a little girl that could be hers, reddish-brown curls wildly tangled as she runs around the yard. She practically shoves her husband outside, finds the front office, and barely manages to keep from begging them for information. Instead, she writes them a check she knows they can’t refuse in exchange for a copy of the girl’s file. She doesn’t get a chance to read it for months, though, her husband suffering a fatal heart attack the week after that visit, her time taken up arranging the funeral and fighting tooth and nail to keep what’s rightfully hers.

The file, when she does open it, is essentially empty, a single sheet of paper noting both parents _“unbekannt”_ and the date of birth (that, at least, is correct, Claire knows, it’s been burned into her mind for the last three years). It’s only when she’s closing the file again that she notices that the name scrawled on the edge is _Anneliese_ , and she feels a wave of anger sweep over her at the fact that her daughter doesn’t even have the name she gave her, the only thing she’ll ever be able to give her. When she finally gets back out to the orphanage, not sure what she’s going to do but unable to do nothing, all they can say is _“Wir dürfen Ihnen nichts mehr sagen.”_ She doesn’t see her daughter anywhere in the building this time and manages to corner someone long enough to find out that she’s been placed with a foster family. Try as she might, every search takes her to another deadend, her reawakened hope of getting her daughter back crushed further every time she hears _“Nein, das können wir nicht antworten,”_ from another foster agency. 

* * *

_Ten Years_

Years go by, Claire celebrating each of her daughter’s birthdays, even if only to herself. She’s walking past a school one weekday afternoon, lost in her thoughts, when a crowd of children streams past her, all around ten. They’re loud, shouts of _“Hast du den Hausaufgaben?”_ and _“Gib mir meine Tasche”_ echoing around the stone courtyard, and she’s about to snap at them when a quiet girl at the back of the group catches her eye. She’s on the small side for ten, her clothes ill-fitting, wide blue-green eyes taking in everything around her, and all Claire can see for a moment is herself at ten, little Klara so desperate to fit in. Before she can actually do anything or even fully process who the girl must be, the children have all run off in a pack, headed for the corner store.

She finds herself making excuses to walk past the school more and more often, only catching a glimpse of the girl once or twice more. The second time she does, she hears one of the other children yell _“Schneller, Anneliese”_ (Genevieve, Claire corrects in her head), sees the head of curly hair (now more red than brown) run to catch up. She nearly trips over her own feet and Claire’s hand shoots out to her surprise, catching the girl by the elbow. _“Danke,”_ Genevieve whispers, nervously pulling her arm away when Claire doesn’t move to let go, frozen at being so close to her daughter for the first time in ten years. She stands there for a long moment, so long that one of the teachers comes out to ask if she’s okay, and she can’t help but ask about Anneliese. The teacher nods her head sadly, explains that the girl has been shuttled from one foster home to another for the past few years, that they’ve never found a place fully suitable for her.

Claire goes back to the apartment she shares with her second husband, tries to broach the subject of children with him again, but he’s as adamant as he’s always been that _“das Kind soll_ **_unser_ ** _Kind sein.”_ They don’t last much longer after he learns she can’t have more children, a mostly amicable divorce leaving her alone again. (She’s gotten used to it by now, though, the silence of the apartment almost soothing. Maybe sometimes she wishes it were louder, full of life besides herself, but that’s not something she’s ever let herself dwell on, not since Genevieve’s birth, and she’s not about to start now.)

* * *

_Seventeen Years_

Claire’s only recently released from surgery to fit her for her leg prosthetic after the car crash that killed her third husband, learning to walk with her cane, and out for an early dinner the next time she sees her daughter. She’s with a young man who looks to be about her age, and she’s smiling at him like he hung the stars and moon in the sky just for her. Genevieve would be around seventeen now, Claire knows, and she feels a surge of protectiveness as she thinks about herself at seventeen, all the ways her life changed after meeting and loving a man. 

The man gets up from the table briefly to greet his friends and she takes that moment to leave, her bill long paid. As she passes her daughter’s table, she can’t help but whisper _“Sei vorsichtig,”_ something in her wanting, needing, to try and protect her (despite the voice inside her telling her it’s seventeen years too late for that). Genevieve stares up at her in confusion about this cryptically whispered message, almost a flicker of recognition in her eyes. Claire wants to hope it’s some inherent connection they have but knows it’s more likely from that day outside her school years ago. Before either of them can say another word, the man she came with shouts _“Anneliese, komm, meine Freunde sind hier”_ and she stands up, nodding at Claire, and walks over to him, a grin lighting her face.

Claire makes her way back to her new ground floor apartment slowly, wondering if she was ever so lighthearted and in love. She supposes she must have been, once upon a time, before the creeping exhaustion of survival stole her soul, and she silently hopes it won’t do the same to her daughter. (The world might belong to her, after all, but she doesn’t own her heart anymore, the two people it belonged to no longer hers.)


	2. Chapter 2

_Twenty-four Years_

She doesn’t realise how much time has passed since she left Güllen, since her life changed in innumerable ways, until she’s on her monthly trip to the _Kaufhaus_ one day and glimpses a couple looking at baby clothes out of the corner of her eye. She doesn’t think much of it at first, it’s a common enough sight, but then she happens to overhear the smallest snippet of their conversation. 

_“Ich weiß nicht, wie man das macht,”_ the woman says, sounding near tears, and Claire closes her eyes, her own sharp memories of feeling lost and confused when she learned she was expecting a child flooding back. She turns, half-planning to say something and half-planning to walk away, wondering if it’s her place to say anything when she never actually got to see motherhood through. Whatever words she might have had in mind disappear when she sees the couple, however: a tall, sandy-haired man and a woman with deep red curls. For half a second she imagines what her life could have, maybe _should_ have been, and then she tightens her hand on her cane and walks away briskly. As she does, she hears him say _“Wir schaffen es zusammen, meine liebe Anneliese,”_ and that’s what forces her to sit down on a bench the moment she gets outside and clear her throat until she doesn't feel like she’ll cry.

Back at her fourth husband’s house, she briefly considers returning to Güllen, not sure what she wants from a trip back, but feeling like a piece of her is missing, left behind somewhere along the way. He shoots down the idea the moment she suggests it, too attached to his city life and modern conveniences to leave even for the shortest while. She leaves him barely a month later, too tired of him whiling away his days and her money at bars, not sure what comes next, but certain it can’t get worse than she’s already experienced.

* * *

_Thirty-one Years_

Her fifth husband is a few years younger than her, still full of life and energy, always humming like the railroad system he’s improved and is so, so proud of. _“Es ist fast wie mein Kind,”_ he says one evening, beaming up at her from where he lays with his head on her lap. She smiles back at him, though she’s wincing inside. He wants children, doesn’t care how they have them, but she’s too afraid that she’s already lost her only chance at being a good parent, at being a parent at all.

They go on trip after trip to test his railroads, to open new stations, and for a little while she feels alive again. Every time they come back to Hamburg, however, she can’t help but scan the train station for Genevieve. The odds of finding her in a city this busy, this crowded, on a train platform of all places, are so very low, and yet Claire can’t help but remember all the other times she’s run into her daughter in places she never imagined. Then, one day, as they’re stepping off a train, they see the conductor point at them and a little boy runs over to her husband, big green eyes blinking up at them. _“Haben Sie die Bahn selbst gebaut?”_ he asks, jumping up and down, believing that, if he gets high enough, he’ll see inside the train. He chuckles, bends down to explain how blueprints work, and she steps to the side. 

As the detailed description of train engines is coming to a close, the boy’s mother approaches with a girl, who must be the boy’s older sister, and grabs his hand, smiling apologetically at them. _“Wir müssen nach Hause, Gottfried”_ says a voice Claire is both used to and shocked by every time she hears it. There’s an extra shock to her system this time, though; some twist of fate must have led her Genevieve to choose her grandfather’s name for her son. Her husband smiles back at her, _“Kein Problem,”_ and then does a barely noticeable double-take when he sees Genevieve’s face. Claire shakes her head imperceptibly at him and he frowns, but lets her lead him away. 

They get back and he immediately asks question after question, Claire answering with the carefully concocted lie she’s had ready for years. He seems to accept her claim that the girl must be a distant relation, despite the fact that she, at least, can now see exactly what features Genevieve got from her and from Alfred. If he didn’t have his head so in the clouds, maybe he’d see it as well, but he’s already moving on to bigger and better railroad plans, plans that eventually backfire and leave her widowed once again. She sees Genevieve’s little family at the station once more, when she’s there to clean up the office, but they don’t see her, and she thinks it’s perhaps for the better, this time.

* * *

_Thirty-eight Years_

Claire’s starting to suspect she’s destined to be alone her entire life, all her relationships and her only child ripped away from her far too early, her heart and mind too cynical, but when her to-be sixth husband promises to show her the rest of the world, she somehow believes him again. They travel for years, filling up both their passports with stamps several times over, and then their plane back to Hamburg goes down one day. He doesn’t make it out alive but she does, ending up in the hospital yet again for a prosthetic, this time her arm. 

A few months later, she’s at the public library, searching for books to take her across the world like she can’t do herself anymore, and sees Genevieve and her children nearby. They seem to be arguing over which books to take home, _“Architektur oder Naturwissenschaft, nicht beide,”_ and she can’t help but smile at how much the girl reminds her of herself as a child and how the boy has stuck to his childhood passion for creating. (She’s surprised to realise both of these things, and then it hurts, more than she’d like to admit, to imagine what their family could’ve been.)

Memories flooding her mind that evening, she considers again returning to Güllen. It doesn’t escape her that she’d be returning even more alone than when she left, but she thinks she has to, has to see some story play out. There’s too much left unsaid, left undone, to never go back, but she’s not quite ready yet.

* * *

_Forty-five Years_

The last time Claire Zachanassian sees her daughter, she’s waiting to board the train back to Güllen for the first time in forty-five years, still unsure what she’s looking for when she goes back, but not knowing where else to start. They’ll be expecting her arrival, she knows that much, having rather publicly announced her return to her hometown as a potential benefactor (of the town she herself ruined). She wasn’t sure she was ready to go back, or if she would ever be, but there’s nothing holding her in Hamburg anymore, all her business now able to travel with her.

She’s just divorced her seventh husband, this time for trying to take control in the businesses she’s been running successfully on her own for over forty years. Seated at the station near where her train will arrive, Claire’s absentmindedly twirling her cane in her hand when she hears a voice talking to her recently hired security. _“Bitte, ich muss mit ihr sprechen,”_ and she glances up to see Genevieve standing a few feet away. She straightens in surprise and gestures for her to be let through.

Genevieve murmurs a brief introduction ( _“als ob das nötig wäre,”_ Claire thinks _)_ , _“Ich bin die Anneliese,”_ ( _“eigentlich Genevieve, nicht Anneliese,”_ her mind insists) and then Genevieve's suddenly tumbling over her own words, explaining how her family is going on vacation and she saw her across the station and how they’ve seen each other so many curious times over the years. All Claire can catch after that is _“Schicksal”_ and _“wie jemand, die ich schon lange kannte.”_ It takes everything in her to not break down and tell her daughter the entire story; she’s not sure she could take reliving it, after all this time. Instead, all she can do is surreptitiously wipe away a single tear and hum along in agreement. 

They stand there for another moment in silence and then her daughter tentatively reaches out to hug her. Claire’s so unused to physical contact that she can only stand there in shock for a moment, barely returning the hug before they separate again. Genevieve tosses a final smile over her shoulder (Alfred’s smile, Claire notes) and Claire climbs aboard her train. Despite the turmoil of emotions flowing through her and the unshed tears lingering in her eyes, she’s certain of what she wants from Güllen now: _Gerechtigkeit_ for the life she could have had with her daughter, stolen all those years ago.

**Author's Note:**

> Big shout-out to @need-not for listening to me ramble about this for several days and then getting me to actually sit down and write it!
> 
> Per usual, kudos and comments appreciated! I'm around on tumblr (where I also yell about musicals) at offarawaysnfuturedays-inmydreams.


End file.
